Augury is a festive collection ranging from vast sorbet-colored landscapes to dense pattern iterations.
 
Augury remixes frames from LoVid’s red, green, and blue (RGB) luminous moving image work. For over two decades, LoVid has been making audiovisual works using custom-built handmade analog video (and audio) synthesizers. In addition to moving-image media, LoVid’s outputs capture stills (frames) from generative video and incorporate these into digital collages, textile designs, wearable works, prints, and more. An essential part of LoVid’s process involves translating signals and experiences from one medium into another. This conversion/interoperability appears critical for living in an interdisciplinary, intermedia, intersectional mixed-reality world.

With Augury, LoVid continues exploring on-chain processes that are inspired by the mechanism and aesthetic of analog synthesis.This collection builds upon LoVid’s first analog video synthesizer-inspired collection: Tide Predictor. Each output in Augury grabs frames from the Tide Predictor algorithm (using a unique new hash) and arranges them on the screen based on a set of instructions, possibilities, and limitations.  The generative compositions in Augury are therefore both procedurally related to and visually reminiscent of quilting, tapestry pattern designs, and tactile weaving. They use visual elements that LoVid often employs in static works: mirroring and repetitive looping, abrupt changes in intensity and detail, overlapping recycled patterns, and a colliding playful mix of lines and signals buzzing in different directions. 

The rules applied in Augury are primarily set around placing variable levels of density on the borders, the edges of the work, creating a sense of dynamic movement and discovery. Focusing the viewer’s gaze outside the center encourages shifts in perspectives, literally and symbolically. Augury is inspired both by the ideas and aesthetics in the Pattern and Decoration (P&D) movement and Glitch art. 

P&D emerged in the 1970s as a response and challenge to a predominantly white male aesthetic that dominated the artworld and historically marginalized art forms and practices of women and people of color. P&D took a feminist approach by shifting the conversation around crafts and decorative arts, placing them on an equal canonic level with western-style paintings. Augury expands this conversation to generative art and challenges hierarchies and relationships to status, economy, and desire. 

Glitch art refers to artifacts that were created by machine error, intentionally or by chance. Glitch as an art form originally emerged as a response to and celebration of loss in signals “fleeting artifacts that momentarily offer a glimpse into the inner workings and complexities of storage, display, and communication technology” (Iman Moradi, 2009). In Augury, LoVid incorporates a color palette, textures, and shapes inspired by both digital glitches and inherently unstable analog outputs. Aesthetically and viscerally, Augury finds beauty in discarded marginal dysfunctionality. 

This collection’s title, Augury, refers to the practice of interpreting omens/predicting the future based on the behavior of birds. Complex systems and environmental signals inspire and require attention. LoVid’s Augury harnesses and embraces this chaos, the turbulent flow of data, to bring you a sweet and colorful feast for the eyes, food for thought and beyond!

Augury

Woop Woop! Run for your life! Kai-Gen are attacking!
Fresh from the underground and ready to smash your city, these mutant beasties come unique and fired up. No polygons or texture maps here, just sweet ray-marching magic living right on-chain. When you're ready, press the 2 key on your keyboard to bring them to life. But be forewarned, animated Kai-Gen are hungry AF and will eat old GPUs like jellybeans. A modern-day PC/Mac desktop is highly recommended, then hit that 2 key, if you think you can handle it...
Key 1 = Still, Key 2 = Animated. Let's GOOOOO!

Kai-Gen

There are many mysterious waves that surround us, from deep space signals to hidden radio stations. 'Unknown Signals' is a reminder of the fascinating world of radio waves that our eyes cannot catch. Click to stop/start the animation. Press the 'b' key to remove the foreground.

Unknown Signals

Cryptocountries is a limited-edition series of digital prints using the medium of generative art. Each map is created by first procedurally generating a terrain height map and then rendering a map in a range of different styles and colours. Each print derives its randomness from a corresponding hash constraining the infinite possibilities for each print in the edition to a single unique image.

The series invites the observer to lose themselves in a selection of maps and annotated photographs from the unorganized archives that loosely chronicle the travels of a stranger in a mythical land.


## Prints 

All original token holders that mint a piece over 1.5 Ξ will be eligible for a single edition (1/1) handmade signed print of their edition using a printmaking technique suitable for the style of image (intaglio etching, screenprint, cyanotype, etc.).  The token holder will be consulted in the creation of their print. Size, paper choice, type of ink and even colours can be customized and chosen to suit the token holder's preferences.   

In addition, free signed digital prints on archival paper will be available to the following collectors
- All original holders that mint over 0.6 Ξ will receive a large signed digital print
- All original holders that mint over 0.3 Ξ will receive a medium signed digital print

All token holders will be able to purchase a signed print of any mint they currently own.

More information on prints can be found [here](https://www.michaelgdevereux.com/cryptocountries-prints).

CryptoCountries: The Unpublished Archives of a Mythical World Traveler

What lies between everything else? A reflexion on scale, shapes, the infinitely small and the infinitely big.

Art Blocks Presents

Augury #4

LoVid

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Kai-Gen

Takeshi Murata, Christopher Rutledge, J. Krispy

Unknown Signals

k0ch

CryptoCountries: The Unpublished Archives of a Mythical World Traveler

Michael G Devereux

Void

Alexis André

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